1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a color measurement system and a device for use with the system, more particularly to the device and process of assigning a numerical value to the color of a material, to provide the ability to reproducibly test fabrics to determine the numerical color value.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
When manufacturers produce fabric, the ability to reproduce that color as close as possible in subsequent production runs is desirable. To this end, the spectrophotometer has been invented and is used throughout the fabric industry. The spectrophotometer assigns a numeric value to an individual fabric specimen, this value being achieved by light absorption of the specimen. This amount of light absorbed by an individual specimen is highly influenced by the pattern within the fabric. Therefore, in some fabrics, especially laces and prints, the readings can vary greatly depending upon the portion and/or direction of the fabric being viewed. Thus, a customer wishing to match a fabric purchased six months prior would read the numeric value of a piece of the fabric and send that number value to the manufacturer. Alternatively they could send the fabric sample to the manufacturer. Although manufacturers generally maintain records of dye lots, if the fabric sample was not mounted exactly the same as the original fabric at the initial reading, the subsequent readings can be inaccurate
The disclosed system overcomes the difficulties of matching dye lots through the use of a closed system to manage fabric specimens and spectrophotometer readings. The disclosed system enables the manufacturer to reproduce the fabric color within variations acceptable to the customer. The system also produces an easy-to-use reference for the customers to reorder the same fabric as well as order a number of different fabrics dyed to match.